CMSB 2014 is an opportunity to hear about the latest research on the analysis of biological systems, networks, and data. The conference brings together computer scientists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, and physicists interested in a system-level understanding of biological processes. The event will be held at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, part of The University of Manchester. (Source: CMSB 2014 webpage)

Recent advances in DNA synthesis have increased our ability to build biological systems. Synthetic Biology aims at streamlining the design and synthesis of robust and predictable biological systems using engineering design principles. Designing biological systems requires a deep understanding of how genes and proteins are organized and interact in living cells: Systems Biology aims at elucidating the cellular organization at gene, protein and network level using computational and biochemical methods.

The Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School (SSBSS) is a full-immersion course on cutting-edge advances in systems and synthetic biology with lectures delivered by world-renowned experts. The school provides a stimulating environment for doctoral students, early career researches and industry leaders. Participants will also have the chance to present their results, and to interact with their peers, in a friendly and constructive environment. (Source: ISSBSS 2014 webpage).

When and where: 23rd-25th September 2013, IST Austria, Klosterneuburg, Austria

CMSB 2013 is an opportunity to hear about the latest research on the analysis of biological systems, networks, and data. The conference brings together computer scientists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, and physicists interested in a system-level understanding of biological processes. The event will be held at IST Austria. (Source: CMSB 2013 webpage).

When and where: 2nd-6th September 2013, Royal Hotel, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK

COSIT (Conference On Spatial Information Theory) was established in 1993 and aims to bring together researchers from different disciplines for an intensive scientific exchange. Focusing on the most innovative and significant recent contributions in the domain of spatial information theory, the conference is designed as a single track meeting. (Source: COSIT 2013 webpage).

The 34th annual international Petri Net conference will take place in Milano from June 24th to 28th, 2013. The language of the conference is English, and its proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in Lecture Notes in Computer Science. All accepted papers will be considered for the “Outstanding Paper” award(s). Papers presenting original research on application or theory of Petri nets, as well as contributions addressing topics relevant to the general field of distributed and concurrent systems are sought (Source: Petri Nets 2013 webpage).

Bioinformatics and statistical genetics, twin themes of the long-running series of annual MASAMB meetings, have gained huge impetus from large-scale genome sequencing projects and development of high-throughput biological assay systems, including gene-expression microarrays, proteomic and metabolomic technologies. These immense data resources, and the underlying complexities of molecular and cell biology, provide exciting research opportunities for numerate scientists.

With typically around 80-120 participants from mathematics, statistics, computer science, bioinformatics, biology and related fields, the MASAMB meetings provide an intimate setting for exchanging ideas in methodological and applied research. Research students and scientists newly entering the field of genomic research are particularly welcome (Source: MASAMB 2013 webpage).

Our next open day will take place on Thursday 14 March. This is the perfect opportunity for young scientists who are considering a career in bioinformatics, a PhD or a postdoc to find out more about opportunities at Europe’s main centre for bioinformatics. You will learn about cutting-edge research projects, get an overview of one of the world’s most important collections of biological databases and tools, and be given time to talk one-to-one with the experts who develop and curate these services. (Source: EMBL-EBI Open Day – March 2013 webpage)

Biological systems constantly deal with uncertainty in the status of the environment and noisy signals from other interacting biological systems. To survive they need to process this information and make appropriate decisions. For example, individual bacterial cells need to decide when to replicate or where to seek biological resources. These decisions need to be optimal when information is incomplete and there is unpredictable environmental variation, inherent stochasticity and small number effects in the biological components used for decision, temporal constraints, risk and a coupled population of other similar individuals.

Biological decisions take place at different levels including single cells (e.g. yeast budding), populations of cells (e.g. bacterial biofilms), networks of interacting cells (e.g. neural ensembles), by individual complex organisms (e.g. the brain) or by populations of individuals (e.g. human society). There has been a recent marked increase in the study of biological decision making in disciplines such as cell biology, developmental biology, neuroscience, psychology, behavioural ecology, robotics and economics. The researchers use a diverse set of theoretical methods including stochastic processes, game theory, Bayesian statistics, machine learning and control theory. This meeting brings those researchers together. (Source: Decision Making in Nature webpage)

Using the Hornberg 2005 MAPK signal transduction pathway model a Genetic Algorithm was implemented in Matlab for moving the peak (i.e. global maximum) of the ERK-PP time series as late as possible i.e. as further away in time as possible. The algorithm starts with a population of randomly initialized individuals and runs for a given number of iterations. In the end, all the individuals for which the peak of the time series of ERK-PP is reached later than a given threshold value are printed in a file “output.txt”. The source code is open source and can be adapted for other projects. You can access it from the github repository behaviour-driver. Thank you to Qian Gao for providing the set of ODEs already implemented in Matlab. They are the result of her own work and only a modified version of the model was used here. For more details regarding the original model, please contact the author.

Ataxia UK has held three research conferences since 2005 at which scientists and researchers from around Europe have gathered to share information and advance the field of ataxia research. This year, Ataxia UK and Ataxia Ireland (formerly known as the Friedreich’s Ataxia Society Ireland) will jointly host the Ataxia Research Conference in London. With full programme of cutting edge research from around the world, this will be a chance to meet people, get new ideas and share your results with the international ataxia research community. (Source: Ataxia 2012 UK Conference – About page)